linky

The appeal for drones, sent out to Gordon’s mailing list, has since grown into a “thermal drone matching campaign” run by the One Israel Fund, another charity based in the Five Towns that supports West Bank settlements. The group hosts tours of the West Bank and holds annual wine-tasting barbecues in the Five Towns to fund settlement security projects. Although it usually raises $3 million per year, the One Israel Fund took in $2.5 million in the month after Oct. 7, according to the Long Island Herald

From newlinesmag

Dunno, if it should be removed or not now, cause china can’t exactly control new york dipshits sales :(

  • RedWizard [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    I had a back forth with someone from ml earlier today about this article, a post they have since deleted. These drones must have been bought between the July 31, 2023 export restrictions on drone tech and the July 2024 adjustments to those restrictions. The drones do not drop bombs, they have a universal mechanism that can drop anything and Israel has created a mechanism to attach to that universal mechanism to drop grenades.

    As it stands now China will not ship these drones to Israel. According to Autel, they have banned the sale of their drones to the entire region. They’ve made two statements on the matter. Here:

    DJI has a similar statement pre 2023:

    On Amazon and other platforms you can not get these drones shipped to Israel:

    In the 9 months between the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the adjustments to drone exports Israel bought 20,000 Chinese made drones (likely through consumer channels) and also relied on civilian donations of drones.

    “Soldiers independently launched crowdfunding campaigns,” L. explained. “Our company received around NIS 500,000 (approximately $150,000) in donations, which we also used to buy drones.” C., another soldier, recalled being asked to sign thank-you letters to Americans who had donated EVO drones to his battalion.

    In a Facebook group named “The Israeli Drone Pilots Community,” many posts request EVO drone donations for units in Gaza. Multiple pages on Headstart (an Israeli crowdfunding startup) were also created to independently raise funds for drone purchases.

    The timeline on this purchase is unclear. It’s also unclear if the changes to the export restrictions are a response to this purchase.

    correction: Israel intends to buy 20,000 Israeli made drones.

    From everything I’ve read and seen there isn’t currently direct sales of drones from China to Israel.

  • glimmer_twin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    Other comments have provided good context around things such as bans now in place for the drones, the drones being weaponised after the fact, etc. Cards on the table I am quite a lot more critical of China than the hexbear median seems to be.

    If it was me running a socialist country I’d be having any executives of companies within that country that sold… anything? to Israel shot. But I understand things are complicated. Geopolitics etc etc.

    As to why exactly my socialist country is full of giant capitalist corporations that are involved in international trade with imperialist countries in the first place… I would probably look into that, I dunno.

  • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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    The CIA near the height of the cold war was able through front companies to buy USSR titanium for their weapons programs such as the B2 and other high performance planes without the USSR detecting this.

    Frankly if you’re China and you don’t control global monetary flows, don’t have ins at every bank, every shipping company, every logistic company, don’t have a global illegal wiretap network and do have a policy of openness and trade wherever possible there is just no way for them to totally stop this.

    I mean the west hasn’t been able to completely stop Russian imports of western products through intermediaries and they really want to and have a lot more visibility throughout the supply chain than China.

  • abc [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    Soldiers most commonly use EVO drones, produced by the Chinese company Autel, which are primarily intended for photography and cost around NIS 10,000 (approximately $3,000) on Amazon. However, with a military-issued attachment known internally as an “iron ball,” a hand grenade can be affixed to the drone and dropped with the push of a button to detonate on the ground. Today, the majority of Israeli military companies in Gaza use these drones.

    https://www.972mag.com/drones-grenades-gaza-chinese-autel/

    Is it China (i.e. the Chinese government) themselves or a company in China that is selling photography drones that the Israeli army is attaching grenade launchers to…hm…

    • machiabelly [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      Yeah the article specifically says “weaponizing” meaning that they weren’t weapons when they were made. So not as bad as the comic makes it out to be. However, why are you selling to Israeli military companies, Mr. Xi?

      • abc [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        Yeah I get what you’re saying but idk personally anytime I hear “X, Y, and Z companies in China are doing this!!” I’m always willing to give the country/government itself a bit of slack given there’s 1.5 billion people living and like 100+ million business entities in China. Saying “The Chinese government was definitely aware of these companies’ sales to Israel” to me just sounds ridiculous because you could argue that the US/EU with their far smaller populations and consequently number of companies should be able to prevent any sale of illegal/restricted/etc stuff but that kind of shit happens 24/7. (One could argue that is just a natural consequence of capitalism of course but you know what I’m trying to say)

    • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      Not sure how the restrictions work, but if you use a VPN and select the Zionist settler-colony as your location, Autel won’t ship to you either from Amazon or AliExpress, from what I’ve seen other users try. I don’t doubt that the IOF is using them, but they don’t seem to be through direct channels.

      • abc [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        Would not be impossible for Israel to just procure them through the US, like they do with basically everything else in their arsenal. Not trying to play defense for Autel, but I think having the DoD order a bunch of ‘photography drones’ and load them on a ship with their monthly supply of interceptor missiles is probably a bit more reasonable than like ‘backroom deals with Israel and Autel’. shrug-outta-hecks

      • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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        I mean considering the lengths that the mossad went through to infiltrate the supply chain of an international pager manufacturer… The whole point is pretty moot. Intelligence agencies are perfectly capable of evading export restrictions.

        If there is an iota of legitimate criticism in this post, it would be that state owned corporations are still operating under the conditions of profit motive, which can lead them to seek to turn a profit on human conflict.

  • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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    As long as this obscenity persists, China is an enemy of the collective working classes of the Middle East

    The old critiques of “Socialism in One Country” are hitting real hard right now

    • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      China is an enemy for producing commercial drones that are banned from being sold to Israel? That’s the same rhetoric as the US blaming China for fentanyl because they produce some of the ingredients that, after exchanging many hands, end up being used by cartels to make drugs.

      And by the same rhetoric I mean racist, imperialist nonsense.

      China produces the parts for Irans drones too, are you gonna complain about that next?

      Is China responsible for colonialism because they introduced gunpowder to the Europeans before they went conquesting?

      • GodDamnAmercia [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        You don’t understand the perfidious Chinese gave the Europeans gunpowder so they could start off a chain of events to finally allow themselves the privilege of making all of those sweet drones.

      • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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        The ‘they said, we said’ situation involving the drone bombers aside

        YES China is an enemy of the working classes of the middle east, China is still trading with Israel and Arab comprador regimes, that’s a fact

        Sorry if that bricks your brain and makes you reach for nonsensical comparisons like the “fentanyl conspiracy”, Chinese foreign policy on the Middle East is pretty clear; western defined “stability” at all costs and pumping billions more into Israeli and Gulf state coffers

        China produces the parts for Irans drones too, are you gonna complain about that next?

        It’s almost like Chinese foreign policy famously works cross purposes with itself; on one hand selling Iran “drone parts” and on the other maintaining a 10 billion dollar trade infrastructure with Israel despite 20 months of genocide

        • Jabril [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          The orientalist bullshit you lapped up and doubled down on aside

          the vast majority of people here are from the countries entirely responsible for Israel, the countries that could turn Israel off today. China could do more to pressure Israel, but saying China is the enemy of other Asian people who also rely on China for even more than Israel does is not only racist nonsense, it’s literally the US position that they are pushing on Asian countries. what’s next, since China is the enemy of the middle east, do you support ETIM terrorist attacks against Chinese people, obviously ETIM being a Muslim organization from Asia has every right to attack the enemies of the middle east, right? It would be their duty to destabilize and overthrow China if they really care about Gaza, or Muslims, or their allies in the middle east like ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and the Baloch Liberation Army?

          Chinese foreign policy in the middle east, you mean being one of the main supporters of the entire Axis of Resistance, and literally every other anti-imperialist nation on the planet while we are at it? The key negotiator to the normalization of relations with Iran and the Saudis. The key mediator which brought 14 Palestinian factions together to be united as one for Palestinian Liberation?

          you are going beyond critical support to just being unduly critical in a way that reads as if you’ve been just waiting to call out those pesky Chinese to the point that you fell for a conspiracy theory that China is providing Israel with drones to bomb Palestinians with, and then dismissed that you were wrong about it to double down on it. No one from the Axis of Resistance is calling out China, and all of them rely on China, but the internet Trot has deemed for the Middle East that China is the enemy.

          China could stop selling teemu shirts and BYD cars to israel tomorrow and the genocide would continue. Little that China is providing Israel is essential to their existence, and Israel’s real benefactors would get it for them if they needed it, in the same way they are getting the drones to Israel that China isn’t sending them. They aren’t providing weapons or even commercial drones, and in fact China gets more weapons tech from Israel which then ends up back into the hands of the Axis of Resistance once it is laundered through the Chinese military industrial complex. So is China supposed to shutter all it’s private drone companies that make non weapons related drones, tell them to fire all their employees and go bankrupt, because they can’t sell drones to anyone ever in case it ends up being misused?

          The only thing China could do to truly impact Israel would be to sanction everyone who trades with Israel and essentially go against their entire geopolitical strategy of decades. To make such massive political change like in a country with over a billion people and a party of over 100 million members is no trivial thing. Not to mention it would destabilize the global economy, have massive negative material affects on the entire world working class, and probably cause the imperialists to go to war with China, or potentially provoke a nuclear response. How long from China shutting trade down with anyone who trades with Israel before Israel collapses? If it takes longer than a few days, the entire global economy is decimated, every Chinese business is decimated so all the people the Chinese state is responsible for are fucked, every country that relies on trade from China is fucked (that’s most countries and the majority of people), food, medicine, energy and other necessities are no longer available for hundreds of millions if not billions of people, and they won’t be the rich ones most impacted, it will be the workers you apparently speak for who are also fucked in this situation. So if Israel can hold out for a couple weeks, months, or even a year, then what?

          There are so many unknown variables that would risk the lives of the Chinese people, the first priority of the Chinese nation who is not directly responsible for anything going on in Palestine, that to think it would be a simple change of policy is some laughable online gamer type analysis. Go back to your Civilization IV game and leave the decisions of who is the enemy to the people themselves.

          • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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            First of all, DO NOT PRETEND Chinese military aid is not a literal weeks old development that may or may not be sustained on Chinas part, there is zero evidence China provides military aid to the broader Axis outside of Iran and we have NO data on the scale of aid it provides to Iran and as far as diplomacy goes, look at Chinese support for PA puppets and tell me that’s for the benefit of Palestinians and not western defined stability mongers. As if China didn’t tacitly back the Abraham Accords, get real

            Now we do have data on the billions China pumps into Israel and the Arab comprador regimes, that’s reality and I couldn’t give a rats ass about the phony, liberal brained, game theory, capitulationist attitude Chinese foreign policy wonks have toward the middle east

            Socialism in China, developmentism in Africa, economic open doors with the rest of the world, and complete reactionary collaboration against the Arab working class, that is China’s foreign policy

            And you call that analysis “Orientalism” for not pretending China is a friend to Arab workers, you dont know what that word means

            If you make billions with the butchers and strike breakers of Arab workers then yes, you’re an enemy of MENA workers, no matter how much socialism develops in your homeland

    • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      don’t think ussr has sunk so low tbh, although czechoslovakia did (but was significantly less obvious at the time due to news travel)

      • glimmer_twin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        Well the Soviets had a complicated relationship with Zionism (pushed for 47 partition for one thing when even the Brits knew it was a bad idea). It took a while for them to figure that one out.

        • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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          Tbh, strongly feel stalin cavalier attitude towards ethnic movements played a strong role in that, but they quickly realized what it was (or, more cynically, that entity became pet imperialist project, most definitively with suez crisis)

          • glimmer_twin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            Yeh I’m not an expert in any regard but I wouldn’t be surprised. I think there was also some realpolitik going on, hoping they could get a socialist Israel under their wings to fuck with the Brits/other imperialist interests in the region

    • plinky [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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      Yeah, that’s why I’m debating leaving post as is, let it and your comments provide some contrast/plausible explanation, or remove it for people not reading stuff

  • Skye [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    The previous post on this was closed for having a misleading title after people said China didn’t actually sell any drones to Israel, no idea if it’s true.

    Really sucks if China is doing this, of course, but I also don’t want to preemptively jump on board any possible attempt to obfuscate who the main supporters of Israel actually are